At this point it seems only people in San Francisco want to see Barry Bonds break Aaron's all time home-run record of 755. He has 753 right now. In San Francisco, the crowds get on their feet every time he gets on deck, and that was even before he got on the cusp of the record. Outside SF, fans boo him, and it's commonly believed that should he tie or break the record in Los Angeles or many other cities, he will get booed for doing it. In SF there is a willing suspension of disbelief.

I'm quite impressed with Google's mobile maps application for smartphones. It works nicely on the iPhone but is great on other phones too.

Among other things, it will display live traffic on your map. And I recently saw, when asking it for directions, that it told me that there would be "7 minutes of traffic delay" along my route. That's great.

For the fun of it, we joined a line at a local independent bookstore last Friday night to get a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Here I will first review the series without reference to the final book, and then make some remarks about things that are missing from the series that could be viewed as very minor spoilers, because they refer to things that might have taken place in the final book, but did not -- but for which knowing they did not will not spoil the book in any meaningful way. However, if you want absolutely no knowledge of this sort, stop reading.

In 1978, after finally saving up enough money, I got myself a Commodore PET computer. I became immersed in it, and soon was programming all sorts of things, and learning assembler to make things go really fast. I soon discovered the Toronto Pet User's Group, which grew over time to be perhaps the most prominent Commodore group in the world.